Roger Federer won his 890th match on the ATP World Tour with a rather simple 63 61 win over Croatia's Ivan Dodig on Monday afternoon.
The match was even at the start, and Dodig fashioned three break points before the Swiss fired off five consecutive points to hold. Both men would hold with relative ease until 3-4 when Dodig played a very loose service game and handed Roger two straight double faults to concede the break meekly. In the second set, Roger raised his level and that, along with Dodig not playing up to his first set standard, allowed Roger to get a double break lead and he would break another time to win the match in just over an hour.
There was a little concern at the end as in the final two games Roger's back appeared to be hurting. It was first noticed when he was serving at 4-1 when he wasn't arching his back on the serve and he wasn't moving for shots as he usually does. Thankfully he only had to play a game and a half with the apparent pain and he actually started teeing off on shots as he clearly didn't want to get into any long rallies.
Overall it was not a great match by Roger but he did what he needed to do and he's through. It was the kind of match that we have seen dozens of times in Roger's career - playing in 2nd gear, not needing to push himself any further against an opponent who he had beaten even before they walked onto court. I noticed that the divide of sun and shade on the court may have made things difficult for Fed at the beginning as he was quickly in double digits for unforced errors. From experience, when the ball is coming to you in sun and then goes to shade or vice versa, it can be hard to time things right.
Next up in the 4th round will be his friend Stan Wawrinka.
In the rest of the day's action, Rafael Nadal received a walkover by Leonardo Mayer. Ernests Gulbis won his 13th straight match against Andreas Seppi, Richard Gasquet took out Jerzy Janowicz, Tomas Berdych beat Florian Mayer, Kevin Anderson beat Jarkko Nieminen, and Gilles Simon beat Benoit Paire.
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